My 2 cents

Granted, but if the arrangement is that the sponsor sends a hardship request to the RK for processing based on a prearranged checklist, where the request does not meet the checklist requirements, (a) the RK should take note of that, (b) the RK should pass word back to the sponsor, and (c) the sponsor should give a go-ahead before the hardship request is honored. Going back to the OP, for the deficient hardship request to get paid under such an arrangement without the request being read with sufficient care to notice that it is no good would require either (a) the RK paying the hardship request out without matching it up against the checklist, (b) the RK passing back the issues to the sponsor but paying it out without an explicit go-ahead from the sponsor, or (c) the RK passing back the issues to the sponsor and the sponsor, even with such a warning, fails to carefully review the hardship requests and instructs the RK to pay it out.

Unless the recordkeepers have agreed to assume fiduciary responsibilities, irrespective of what the sponsor may be assuming, it is outside the recordkeepers' responsibilities to make eligibility determinations and, especially, to determine whether a participant meets the hardship requirements. So yes, recordkeepers who bounce such determinations back to the sponsor (and bouncing it back explicitly is necessary if the sponsor seems to be leaving it up to the RK) can and should stay in business, since every one of their competitors would (presumably) do the same.

Wondering whether, if everything happens quickly enough, the proceeds could be rolled over to an IRA? Although, if I am not mistaken, that would prevent them from being used to buy another house without substantial tax consequences. There are no hardship withdrawals from IRAs, right?

I have to agree with MoJo - the idea of the government being subjected to fiduciary standards with respect to how it spends money, irrespective of one's politics, is so absurd as to fall entirely outside the realm of possibility. Where would one start? Just consider that the military spends more every year on viagra than the cumulative expense for the myRA program. The only possible arena for an "aggressive fee attorney" with respect to myRAs would be if they bore 5% annual service fees.

According to the original post, this is a chapter 11 filing and there has been an application to the PBGC for a distress termination. Perhaps the PBGC should be contacted concerning the outstanding service fees. Especially if the plan is trusteed by the PBGC (which seems to be more likely retroactive to the bankruptcy filing than as of any other later date), it would be the PBGC who would have to authorize paying expenses from plan assets. May as well make sure that the PBGC is aware of that aspect. As I mentioned above, it does not sound as though expenses must be paid by the sponsor.

This is where you go when even using Google you can't find any useful information on your compliance questions!

Listen, sometimes you just have to look things up using Google or something equivalent. So I did that. True, Nickel Beer Day in Cleveland in 1971 was not a big problem. The problem was on a ten cent beer night on June 4, 1974, around a week after a brawling loss by Cleveland in Texas (the Indians' opponent on that night). Read about it. Total disaster. One example: Crew chief Nestor Chylack forfeited the game to Texas and was injured when one rioter struck him in the head with part of a stadium seat and he also suffered a cut to his hand from a thrown rock. Texas player Mike Hargrove was nearly hit by an empty gallon jug of Thunderbird. And we won't even discuss the fans who ran out naked onto the field. At the next beer night promotion on July 18th (!), the team imposed a limit of two beers per purchase.

I don't think that would be considered union-busting in this context. Offering employees more to not unionize is union-busting, but here they are already covered by the CBA. Who said anything about providing benefits that are larger than those called for under the CBA? I thought I saw something above saying that the union members would continue to get what they have been getting but non-union members (when there are such employees) would be given less.

...which could be a matter of greater concern than access to quick, super-cheap beer!

According to earlier posts, this would be a single employer collectively bargained plan. The union bargaining process for such plans involve the employer representative (that is, the representative for THIS company, presumably one or more of the owners) sitting down and negotiating with the union representative(s) for this specific local. No outside parties, no area-wide Taft-Hartley bargaining committees making decision binding on individual employers, and no way that a CBA just shows up signed. It would have to be signed by these owners (as employer representatives) and union representatives. This employer would necessarily be the plan sponsor, with the plan satisfying the terms of the CBA negotiated between the plan sponsor and the union.

No criticism of you intended!

No issues with the idea of "Nobody Night", but "Tonya Harding Bat Night"????? Ewwww!

I am still trying to wrap my mind around the idea that the owners are members of the union. The strong implication is that this would be a single employer plan, not a part of a multi-employer plan. So who tries to hold the line on cost when there are negotiations?

1. If the plan says that the plan can pay expenses to the extent not paid by the employer, it would seem that the obligation to pay the actuary belongs to the plan and not the bankrupt employer (who is clearly not going to pay the fees). 2. As there has been a filing for a distress termination, it is probably to the PBGC that the actuary will have to turn seeking approval of payment of their fees from the plan assets. 3. I would find it difficult to reconcile withdrawing an already issued actuarial certification with the requirements of the standards of practice, especially due solely to unpaid fees. It looks more spiteful than anything else.

Sorry, but is it clear that non-tax levies can be imposed on qualified 401(a) plan benefits notwithstanding spendthrift rules or clear that non-tax levies cannot be imposed? It has been unquestionably established, has it not, that IRC Section 401 benefits can never be reached under bankruptcy laws absent active fraud (such as large contributions being made in anticipation of declaring bankruptcy, to shield those assets).

Rabbit Maranville was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1954 (a few months after he died). Even though not particularly stellar offensively, he was a perennial MVP candidate in his long career due in large part to his defensive skills.

In my opinion (for what that is worth), the payments for January (interpreting the post as saying that the January 2016 payment was not cashed) through December 2016 are owed to the participant's estate. Pretty clearly, those checks will have to be reissued. In a perfect world, by now there would be an executor to whom checks made payable to the "estate of..." could be provided. Whether interest should be added is a matter of plan administrative practice. The amounts owed are not owed to a beneficiary, but to the participant/the participant's estate. If anything was payable for periods after the death of the participant, that would be payable to the beneficiary, not the participant.

Oh, if it is a new plan sponsored by a new company, they can probably exclude the employees until they have a year of service with the new company. Don't have to count service with a prior employer. What they CANNOT do is count service with the prior company for the new owner but not for everyone else. So if everyone else has to wait a year to become participants in what is (presumably) intended to be a qualified plan, there is no possibility of the new owner not also having to wait a year. NONE.

"It appears he is trying to credit predecessor service for himself, even though he was not an employee (as RBG stated), and ignore service for the others." You can't always get what you want. Especially if it violates the non-discrimination rules.

...and wife!!!

The question comes down to whether the plan or the rules applicable to 403(b) plans automatically render all existing beneficiary designations invalid upon the marriage of the participant (the way they seem to in plans qualified under 401). If that were the case, and the intention of the parties were for the participant's mother to be the beneficiary, it would require the spouse's consent to make it happen. The controversy as I see it from my distant vantage point is that it is the spouse who, absent unusual circumstances, ought to be the beneficiary, not the participant's mother.

Genesis 2:24 says (to use the King James version as representative of the various available translations) "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife..."). The right thing to do, if it is not automatic under the plan, would be for the participant to stand up and explicitly designate his wife as his plan beneficiary. For his mother to object would be selfish and self-centered on her part. While it is appropriate for him to honor and respect his mother, the participant's primary obligation is now to his wife.

Agree with MoJo - absolutely no chance that the participant's mother has any rights subject to protection. In fact, public policy undoubtedly leans in the direction of encouraging marriages and providing such protection as is appropriate for the spouse. Tymesup expresses sympathy for the participant, who (Tymesup apparently thinks) went blindly into the marriage without warning. I have two comments on that: 1. Western literature offers all the "warning" anyone could need about matrimony (including Henny Youngman as one limited source of western literature). Doesn't western literature actually offer more warnings about in-laws than spouses? I wonder whether the participant's spouse is more entitled to sympathy. Were there warning signs about her mother-in-law-to-be, who appears to begrudge the spouse the usual and customary rights to protection in the event of the participant's death? 2, Shouldn't one offer congratulations and not sympathy to someone who marries?

Has it been established that the plan is silent/ambiguous on this point? If you can point to anything specific in the plan, that ought to settle it. Then, of course, assuming that the plan allows the participant, with spousal consent, to change to a non-spouse beneficiary, for the mother to go back to being the beneficiary would merely require that the participant and the spouse so elect.

I may be piling on here, and in commenting at all, I am presuming that the rules for 403(b) plans (on which I do not work) concerning all existing beneficiary designations automatically becoming invalid upon marriage are the same. Does the plan even allow the participant (with spousal consent) to redesignate his mother as beneficiary? As a final thought: We all think we know what the mother wants. What does the participant want? What does the spouse want? Isn't the participant's primary duty, having married, to provide for his spouse and not his mother? Are we to assume that his mother does not approve of the marriage to this spouse (or even to his having married at all instead of staying home and devoting himself to his mother)? Can this marriage be saved?